- except Optus Cuatomers. Their warning that a natural disaster is happening is that they will loose reception. /s
I hate all these fucking phone alerts. My country has moved from actual air sirens to these alerts and last time they sent one out for a huge storm my father got it at 9 AM while I fucking got it at noon while the storm was already throwing roof tiles around.
The system is designed to work for most phones released since 2019.
So most phones since 2019 have builtin functionality to blare alarms, show messages on the home screen, and… fuck knows what else… at the sole discretion of the telco?
Curious if anyone here knows more about the mechanism that allows this, presumably it’s some kind of standard? Will custom ROMs work with it or is this another in a long series of fuck yous to anyone daring not to patronise the Bay Area Douche Nexus?
Edit: I see, it’s Cell Broadcast, part of 3G, 4G, 5G, etc. standards. I still wonder about the “un-opt-outable” part; is it just that most phone OSes don’t provide an opt out or is it implemented in firmware somehow? Warning tones I can imagine being wired straight to the drivers, but a visual message seems like it’d have to have OS cooperation.
My Samsung phone has an option to turn it off in settings. I don’t see why I would, but I can opt out if I wanted to.
Some places in the world probably abuse it for non-emergencies. Imagine the reach for marketing!
Clive Palmer already spams out text messages in some places. Imagine if he could pay Telcos to broadcast these for him. Both Clive and Telstra would be frothing over the implications.
I read about a fuckup in the 911-phone-system in some jurisdiction, some years ago:
they had blaring-siren hammer any phone which dialed 911, & someone who was hiding-from a house-invader dialed it, … thereby blowing their concealment.
PLEASE get them to understand that they NEED to make their alarm-system NOT override any emergency-services-hotline call, for the sake of people in such situations.
It wouldn’t kill many people per year, but I’d rather have that be none, than few, right?
( I’m not Aussie, & have zero clue who’d need to be informed of the risk )
_ /\ _
Users will not to be opt out.
Who’s fucking phone is it exactly? Did the government buy it for me? No?
Then get fucked. On principal alone.
Maybe best to save the outrage for when / if you ever get an unwanted warning.
This isn’t at the phone level though, presumably the Telco level , and broadcast to all phones connected to particular towers, may be that’s why there is no ability to opt out per se?
If my phone is in do not disturb then that should be my choice.
Anyway I’ll calm my tits.
Graphene OS will likely still let me turn off this bullshit.
They can ping all phones that connect to a transmission tower. If you can connect to it, they can connect to you - and honestly, it’s a safety thing, much like a public tsunami warning siren. Calm your tits.
